


Moments

by steelneena



Series: Widomauk Week 2k19: With A Twist [3]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: First Kiss, Leylas Krynn is definitely not Galadriel, M/M, New Relationship, Widomauk Week 2019, dunamancy, post rez
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-05
Updated: 2019-06-05
Packaged: 2020-04-08 11:33:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19106263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/steelneena/pseuds/steelneena
Summary: Prompt: Day 3, Formal Event





	Moments

**Author's Note:**

> Stranger than the others, but not the strangest by far. 
> 
> Inspired by: 
> 
> https://444vno15v5re20btub322y5h-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Kent-Davis-@iDrawBagman.jpg
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y61xASw1m4U

Xhorhaas is anything but what Mollymauk expected it would be. He’s never seen anything quite so opulent in either of his short lives, and he thinks that he probably never will again. Compared to Rohsonna, Zadash - the biggest, most amazing place he’s been - is like a paltry stop over. Now, he’s never been to Rexxentrum (and something in his gut tells him that he should probably avoid it), so maybe it would outshine the splendour of his present surroundings, but  in this moment, the Lucid Bastion takes his breath away. 

The columns that support the enormous cathedral-like ceilings are carved from a lovely, unfamiliar stone, dark grey, with heather overtones and silvery pearlescent veins spidering through its surface. It’s almost, upon closer inspection, transparent, and he wonders for a moment if it’s very thin, though somehow strong, like muscovite, or if it is just not entirely opaque. He can almost imagine strange, water dwelling creatures swimming behind their lustrous stone façades.

The thought crosses his mind that he’ll have to ask before he leaves, and then, it suddenly hits him that they  _ aren’t _ leaving. 

That, in his absence, somehow, this strange, peculiar place has become his friends’ home.

That it is expected to become  _ his _ home. 

_ “When we get home,”  _ and  _ “I can’t wait until you see our house!”  _ and  _ “We’ve been saving a bedroom for you,”  _ have all been frequent phrases fallen from his friends lips. 

Ever since they... _ got him back _ , yes, that sounds palatable...ever since they got him back, they’ve been excitable to bring him to the place once known as Ghor Dranas, and he hadn’t known exactly what to expect, but it wasn’t as though they’d told him anything either. 

“Molly!” 

He looks up, shaken from his reviere to see that the others are well ahead, Fjord turned, beckoning to him to hurry up. Reluctantly, he steps away, allowing his fingers to still trail along to cool surface of the stone until it curves away from him and his fingers part from it, touch lingering as his arm falls back, slowly, to his side. He watches the arching trajectory of his hand, as though Caleb has cast  _ Slow _ on it, or the air had been turned to water. 

If he watches carefully, he thinks, he can see a trail of grey light and white sparks in his wake. He’s still moving, but it feels like he’s stopped. It’s curious and fascinating and his brain feels sluggish and his feet like they’ve been tied to boulders, and his hand is still sweeping back and back and-

“Molly! C’mon!” 

Molly jolts and realizes that they’ve already made it to the floor to ceiling double doors, slender dark shapes like the wings of a bird, made of some rich wood. Before moving - just half a second before - he looks down, and sees that his hand is back at his side where it belongs. Like nothing at all had happened.

“Molls! Godsdamn it, what’re you-” 

Without wasting another moment, he sets himself to a trot and in no time at all, he’s right behind the others. This close, he can see the exasperation on Fjord’s face. 

“We got a fucking Queen in there and you wanna make her wait?” 

“Sorry,” he says, but his mind is back by the pillar, watching his hand fall back to his side forever and instantaneously all at once. 

The guards open the doors before them and the Nein trail in. Molly, at the back of the group, can’t really see anything at first, but as the party spreads out, the - it’s not a room, not even a chamber, it’s...it’s like a  _ cavern _ . A cavern of jagged, carved dark stone at the base of a the numerous, numerous stairs of luminous iridescent stone that rise at an alarming incline to a raised dais, whereupon Molly can see a facsimile of the dodecahedron from Zadash.

At first, his brow furrows in confusion, but then he recalls a little about what had been said, about babies and souls from the drow that they let go, and things start to click into place. At first, Molly leans in to whisper a question in Yasha’s ear, but then he looks up further and the whole interior is revealed to him. At the dais, the stairs split into a fan of various, staggered heights; the one directly behind the dodecahedron rises highest above all the others, so impossibly bright by comparison to the rest of the place. It bursts into an icy star, at the foot of which Molly sees a throne, and on that throne, a female figure, so high up and far away, and almost glaringly bright that Molly can hardly discern her form. 

Molly feels his jaw drop as she stands, more bright and beautiful and alluring than anything he’s ever seen before. 

Even Caleb. 

Her descent from the throne is languid, and he finds that he can’t look away. His breath slows, stops. The Queen - for she must be the Queen - in her first steps down from the throne, hangs suspended in the moment. The light, the source of which Molly still has been unable to identify (because he’s too busy being entranced by the Bright Queen) surrounds and engulfs her. His heart slows. Ages pass between the beats. The world disintegrates around them, until all that is left is Molly, and the steps and the Queen and the light. 

He lives and dies a whole lifetime in the moments between the lift of her foot and its pure, echoing fall.

And then, the rush of the world starts up again and he’s left lightheaded and reeling, just like he was before. 

When she speaks, her voice rings out impossibly loud and clear, diamond sharp. 

“Mighty Nein.” 

Molly looks around, hoping to follow their lead, but mostly they just shuffle awkwardly. A part of him (an old part, from  _ before _ ) itches to sweep forward and bow to her deeply, ostentatious and grand.

He doesn’t. 

It is Caleb who speaks. “My Queen, you have summoned us.” 

“You are late returned from your...sabbatical.” 

“Ja, my Queen.” 

“You were...successful in your goal?” 

Molly looks between the two cautiously. He knows, logically that they are discussing him as though he’s not there, and that  _ bothers _ him, and yet he’s not sure if it’s happening just because, or if there’s a deeper reason, if perhaps the Queen doesn’t  _ know _ at all what their mission was-

“I am glad to hear of it. Hopefully, it will aid you as you have so claimed.” 

She sounds even and discerning while never losing an iota of her high and mighty aura, like Molly always imagined those mythical, fair rules of bygone days were supposed to sound, and she looks like a goddess, bathed in moonlight and surrounded by the whispersoft echoes of reverent (or not so reverent) feet. 

“Now, we must return to the matter at hand.” She’s still taking the steps slowly, until she’s descended to the main dais, the hems of her skirts just brushing the stand upon which is seated the dodecahedron replica. “You have promised to bring further word regarding the-” 

Abruptly, she stops, and even though she is still a great distance away, Molly can feel, for the first time, her eyes light upon him. 

“And who is this?” 

Instead of his heart going slow, like before, it begins to race, and Molly raises his hand to his chest almost subconsciously, that is, at least, until he feels the raised edges of the scar, startling himself. 

Caleb speaks again. “He is our success from our, ah, how did you put it, sabbatical. The missing member of our number.” 

For a moment, Molly half expects her to say something like ‘I still don’t see nine of you’, but she doesn’t, her heavy gaze coming to rest on him again, and it’s suddenly as if, for all the world, Molly and the Bright Queen are the only two in it. 

“What is your name?” she asks, sharp and gentle all at once, somehow. 

At first, all he can do is breathe, shakily as the Nein part for him. He doesn’t step forward, his tail should be lashing out behind him, he thinks, except that it’s wound tightly around his calf instead. “M-mollymauk,” he stammers uncharacteristically. “Mollymauk Tealeaf.” 

“Mollymauk Tealeaf.” His name drips like honey from her lips. He doesn’t understand it. Doesn’t understand anything anymore. “Welcome to Rohsona. Your companions have done us a great service.” 

He can hear himself speaking in his head, see himself formulating words, but nothing comes. Nothing happens. Molly only waits, numbly, for her to continue. The slow feeling still infects his limbs, like a poison. 

“You are welcome in our city because of it.” Her hands spread wide and open, but her eyes, he thinks, are narrowed and suspicious. Maybe she can feel how slow things move around him, how the world seems to grind to a halt. 

Maybe she can see it. 

Maybe she knows. 

Molly misses most of the rest of the discussion, misses the words that she speaks, commending them, how they are offered gifts less in payment of their service and more in recognition. And then, she asks them a question. He doesn’t quite catch it, but he does see Beau blanche and Caleb’s eyes go wide. 

“My Queen,” says Fjord, apparently speaking for all of them. “We would be honoured to accept.” 

Thinly, the radiant figure smiles. “Then it is settled.” 

The corners of her eyes are on Molly the entire time. 

He can feel it. 

They’re dismissed, turning to go, the soldiers that led them in flanking as they made to leave. Almost impossibly soft, Molly hears her voice in his ear. 

_ “Welcome home, Mollymauk Tealeaf.”  _

The shiver takes him from head to toe. It’s impossible for her to have said what she did, to him and him alone, for she is up on the dais and he below standing on marble so smooth it looks more like a flat, still poor of dark water. And yet...and yet…

That is her voice, tickling in his ear. 

Molly turns back to look at her, wistful and terrified all at once, and catches that she is watching him carefully. Her voice does not echo, but her lips twitch and her eyes follow him with great interest, and knowing satisfaction. She’s left him unsettled and she knows it. 

He just doesn’t understand why. 

Once more, the world grinds to a halt and the turn of his head back is stopped in its tracks and that moment, where their gazes first begin to break, lasts it’s own century, and ever incomprehensible sentiment is passed between the two of them in that time. Though Molly still cannot parse apart her meaning, he feels acutely that she is speaking to him. That she is trying to communication  _ something _ . Something significant. Something important. 

_ Yes,  _ his own gaze, lingering, breaking, seems to say.  _ Yes. I want to know. I want to understand.  _

The moment comes to an abrupt end, not with the gradual speed up of previous times, but rather with an impossible jolt, the sound of her staff ends slamming down to the stone floor. 

Throughout the room, it echoes, loudly. 

The Nein turn, confused, mumbling and see that Molly is trapped staring at her, and she at him. That he is locked to her enigmatic gaze. 

“For give us, your Majesty, he’s not yet well.” 

Her aquamarine eyes flash terrible and powerful in the distance, and she says nothing, and finally, finally, Mollymauk breaks with her, though the lingering tether of her gaze has been bound to his soul. He will never recover those moments again. He will never get them back. They belong to the Bright Queen now. 

Yasha grasps him gently by the shoulders and moves him from the room and the guards usher the doors shut with a soft swish and a low boom behind them. 

“What’s gotten into you, Molly?” Jester asks. 

He honestly doesn’t know if he answers her. 

 

Later, he is in their (his new) home, alone in the room designated for him. He likes it well enough, but he’s cold and lonely in the bed. It feels too much like a grave for his liking and the stone walls make for a drafty interior, though it is obviously a home of great quality. 

It doesn’t much matter. He’s always cold now.

Halfway to convincing himself that he should leave the cozy confines of his bed and go to Yasha, there is a rap at his door. 

“Come in.” 

What Molly doesn’t expect to see is Caleb. 

In the perpetual darkness of Rohsona, his hair shines brass and his eyes almost seem to glow. He stands with a straight back and his hands clasped behind him, and clears his throat. 

“Hallo, Mollymauk.” 

“Hullo, Caleb.” 

And this of all times is when his heart decides to start racing. The silken sheet slides off his chest as he props himself up on his elbows to more properly greet Caleb. Immediately, his companion’s eyes slide down to his sternum and remain there, however unintentionally. Absently, the raised, silvery scar on his chest begins to tingle and, for the first time he can recall, Molly lifts his sheet to cover himself instead of reveal himself. 

Politely, Caleb coughs.

Molly  _ hates _ it. 

“What’s going on, Caleb?” 

“I wanted to make sure you were alright.” Caleb starts to fidget and Molly has never felt more uncomfortable in his life, like there’s something now that can’t be spoken between them, that’s taking up space and this time it’s on Molly’s end and not Caleb’s. Before, when it was just Caleb, Molly didn’t mind it. 

It’s  _ always _ different when it’s you, he reminds himself. 

Always. 

So, of course, when Molly responds, it’s with, “I’m fine, thanks.” 

Caleb hesitates. The fidgeting increases. Molly feels his breathing ratched up another notch. 

“Molly-” 

“Would you just have out with it already!?” he shouts over Caleb, who looks at him so piercingly, that Molly knows that he’s shown his hand too soon. That he might have gotten out of it if he hadn’t exploded. But it’s too late for that now. Far too late. 

Caleb’s expression changes to something that Molly can’t identify. WIthout warning, he strides towards the bed, sinking down before it on his knees, and sliding Molly’s hand into his own smoothly. Molly’s too shocked to say a word. The warmth of Caleb’s hands seep into his own chilled ones and he can’t help but close his eyes with a light flutter. The sensation is incredible and everything he’s hoped for for so long, and yet…

“Schatz,” Caleb says, and Molly knows that it must be some sort of endearment, because he generally hears it said in relation to Nott. “You were acting...strange, earlier, and now...you are acting off. Something is the matter. Let me help you.” He shook his head, wearily. “If this is to do with your...return to life-”

“No. No.” Molly reaches back, and the sheet slips away again, but this time, Caleb doesn’t even seem to notice. “It’s not that. There are - there are  _ things, _ but it’s not that. I feel...slow. Like I’m swimming in molasses. I don’t...everything keeps slowing down. See the pillar, with the Queen… And on top of that, I don't feel like me, Caleb.” He’s really starting to get worked up. “ I haven't yet at all. But really. Not once. Everything is off and wrong and I  _ hate _ this room because it feels like I'm in a tomb and it's so damned quiet and drafty and it's always dark outside, and I'm suffocating, Caleb,  _ please. _ "

"Molly." Caleb's voice aches with emotion. Only then does Molly realize that he's shaking. Like a leaf. 

" _ Caleb _ !" Molly sobs and leans into his arms. 

"I have got you, Mollymauk I will always have you.” 

Surprisingly, Caleb pulls Molly into his arms; he goes pleasantly lax, happy to feel that warm support of another person against him. He’s so used to it being Yasha that he doesn’t quite know what to do with the whole scenario now that it’s Caleb’s form holding him steady. Where Yasha was firm but cushiony muscle, Caleb is taut and sinewy, lean, but sturdy, which is a word Molly never thought to apply to the fragile, easily damaged wizard. 

But the long, skilled hands play across the skin of his bare back and Molly finds himself lost to the dizzying play of patterns that Caleb tattoos there. He loses himself to it for a while, and almost doesn’t notice when the moment  _ slows _ , much in the way time had slowed around him the last few times. 

The thrum of Caleb’s heartbeat against his own chest is trapped between syncopated measures, and the world takes a gasping breath as Molly memorizes every detail of the impossibly long moment. 

The tickle of Caleb’s eternal exhale against his cheek. The brush of his own hair at his neck, the eminanting heat of their bodies pressed together, the soft pressure of the pads of Caleb’s fingers. 

All around them, the world is silent. 

Molly thinks, he would hear it if a mouse sniffed. 

And then, all of a sudden, everything is back the way it was meant to be and Caleb is pulling away from him, sliding his hands from Molly’s back to instead grasp securely around his upper arms. 

“You mentioned-”

Molly, overwhelmed, consumed, silences him with the barest, gentlest kiss. 

Caleb stiffens beneath him and, for a moment, Molly thinks he’s made a mistake, but then Caleb melts into the touch and kisses back. It’s gentle and perfect and when they finally break apart, Molly can see that Caleb’s eyes are shining. 

“Uhmm,” Caleb says, licking his lips, watching Molly’s own very closely, “I have forgotten what I was going to say.” 

“‘Fraid I can’t help you there, darling.” 

“You, ah..” Caleb takes his hand again, rubbing at the smooth skin over the head of the tattooed snake with his thumb. “You mentioned the world going slow. I was going to ask you about that. It has you unsettled. Describe to me, what you saw, what it felt like?” 

“Molasses. It felt like molasses. I saw…” Molly shakes his head. “I don’t know what I saw. Light? But not light? It didn’t seem like anything I’d seen before. It was like those rainy days, you know? The ones where you have to squint because it’s all gray out, but it’s too bright to look at anything?” 

Caleb’s ensuing intake of breath leaves Molly feeling uncertain, but he takes comfort in the continual brush of Caleb’s thumb, even if it presses a bit deeper than before. 

“Molly, I think…” Caleb bites his lip. “Do you remember what I told you of the Beacon, ah, er, pardon, of the  _ Dodecahedron _ ?” 

His mouth goes dry. 

“Yes.” 

“This is what it looks like when a person practices the dunamantic arts.”

Caleb lifts a hand, and Molly feels the simultaneous push and pull, the desire to be near and the fear of what is about to happen as Caleb casts a spell. It doesn’t land on himself, but rather on Caleb, and Molly watches as the same grey, sparkling light substance trails after the pale hand. 

The look on his face must tell it all, for Caleb doesn’t make to reach for him again, waiting it out instead. 

“It happened again,” Molly confesses quietly, filling the space made empty by the lack of touch. “When we kissed, it happened again.” 

“I will help you figure this out.” Caleb says, and Molly can see his brain begin to whirr, thinking about all the possibilities. “I know at least one person we can talk to-”

“Kiss me again?” Molly cuts him off. “Please? I don’t want this to be what I remember about the first time we kissed. I want to remember that we kissed again. Please, Caleb?” 

Time does not slow as Caleb’s lips meet his once more. 

It’s the first and only time, Molly thinks, he wishes it would, just so that he could live in a perfect moment for a small eternity longer. 

But there will be many kisses after this, he reasons. 

He’s not dead, and they’re in Xhorhaas, and he might have some strange connection to weird time magic, but he’s kissing Caleb Widogast, and maybe, just maybe, everything will be okay. 


End file.
